Wrestling /
The Nexus

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"We are the bold United souls We live to win another victory Our sacred scars Show who we are And tell the story of our memories We are one, we are one, we are one, we will stand together"

— 12 Stones, "We Are One", the entrance theme of The Nexus.

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In 2010, WWE canceled the ECW brand after a three-and-a-half year run; they replaced it with a show named "NXT", which would follow eight WWE "rookies" (in reality, members of WWE's developmental system) as they trained alongside WWE "pros" (established WWE wrestlers) for the right to become the next "breakout star". The winner of the competition would receive a WWE contract and the right to challenge for any championship they wished on a live pay-per-view.

The first "season" saw NXT Rookies Wade Barrett, Michael Tarver, David Otunga, Skip Sheffield, Darren Young, Heath Slater, Justin Gabriel, and - last, but certainly not least - Daniel Bryan fighting against each other and the Pros in matches, competing in different challenges (including a promo contest), and generally attempting to get themselves over with the crowd. About halfway through the first "season", Rookies started getting eliminated...but some rookies returned to NXT to speak out against the eliminations and the Pros, saying the Pros had offered little help in the competition. Eventually, Wade Barrett won the competition. And then six days later...all hell broke loose.

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During a main event match between CM Punk and John Cena on the June 7 2010 edition of Raw, Wade Barrett started making his way down to the ring; this was not altogether curious, since it's a longstanding pro wrestling tradition for heels with a title shot on their hands to "scout" the competition. The observant fan may have noticed the yellow armband he was wearing with a black "N" printed on it.

Then Michael Tarver showed up in the crowd, decked out in his ring gear and wearing a bandana over his face that made him look frightening. A few moments later, Tarver and the other six NXT Rookies jumped the barricade, all wearing the same armband as Wade Barrett. And then the group that would later be known as The Nexus started laying waste to anything and anyone in their path: the Straight Edge Society, ringside workers, announcers, and - especially - John Cena (the top guy in the industry), who received one of the most one-sided, brutal, viciously beautiful beatdowns in his career at the hands of every member of the group.

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Since then, The Nexus blazed a trail of destruction, terrorizing both Raw and SmackDown to make a name for themselves (part of a larger plan, including making Wade Barrett the WWE Champion). Nobody, from John Cena to Sheamus to Barrett's "Pro" Chris Jericho to even Bret Hart and Vince McMahon, was safe from their wrath.

Following a do-or-die match at Hell in a Cell 2010, John Cena was officially forced into the group, where he found out on orders of the Raw General Manager that if he refused to follow orders from Wade Barrett, his WWE contract would be terminated. With Cena's last hope - destroying Nexus from the inside out - dashed, it remained to be seen if Cena would be a reluctant Nexus member or if he would become a willing part of the group. As it turned out, he resisted temptation and remained the hero, even if it did "cost him his job" for a few weeks (Barrett let him come back).

After TLC 2010, The Nexus disappeared for a week...only to come back to Raw on the last show of 2010, announce they were under "new management", and beat down John Cena once more - leading to The Reveal that CM Punk was now the new leader of The Nexus.

Daniel Bryan was booted out of the group following its initial attack on Raw (for reasons to be explained below), Darren Young and Michael Tarver were excommunicated from the group following failures in the ring, Skip Sheffield was stated by a WWE.com article to no longer be a member for failing the group by getting injured, John Cena left the group upon his "firing" from WWE, and Wade Barrett was ostensibly excommunicated from the group by CM Punk himself in the very first Raw of 2011. Heath Slater and Justin Gabriel followed the next week after refusing to go through with CM Punk's initiation into the New Nexus. On the Raw following the Royal Rumble, Husky Harris was written out via a punt to the head from Randy Orton. Then in late February and early March respectively, Michael McGillicutty, David Otunga, and Mason Ryan were written out the same way. However, Otunga, McGillicutty and Ryan returned on the 4/13/2011 edition of RAW to cost Orton a victory over Dolph Ziggler in a #1 contender's gauntlet match, and then beat the hell out of him post-match. With Punk's contract expiring, followed by his subsequent return & feud with John Cena, Ryan's injury in June, and Otunga and McGillicutty receiving new music & a new Titantron, The Nexus effectively ceased to exist on 7/29/11.

On the same week The New Nexus was formed, Wade Barrett faced The Big Show on SmackDown, and during said match, Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater - as well as a newly-heel Ezekiel Jackson - interfered in the match and assisted Barrett, forming a new group named The Corre. They were a force to be reckoned with at first, with Gabriel and Slater winning the Tag Titles (twice) and Barrett winning the Intercontinental Title.

Then at Wrestlemania, they lost in 30 seconds to The Big Show's team. Shortly after, Ezekiel Jackson was kicked out of the group for being his own man. Jackson responded by eventually taking Barrett's IC Title. Barrett began leaving Gabriel and Slater to fight his battles for him during this time, which led to them ditching him to form a separate tag team, leaving Barrett on his own and ending the Corre. Tropes used in The Corre follow this section.

The Nexus

Tropes associated with The Nexus before they divided into New Nexus and Corre include:

At one point, The Nexus brutally injured Bret Hart by putting him in the back of a limousine and then backing it into another vehicle. Since all members of The Nexus were present at the time of the attack, speculation ran wild on who was the driver who agreed with The Nexus' attack, with theories ranging from a secret leader of The Nexus, to Daniel Bryan (who was fired shortly before this attack took place) still being employed. The limousine driver remains a mystery to this day.

The Nexus originally claimed to have a goal that aimed at "the bigger picture", which was implied to be something else besides Wade Barrett's WWE Championship oportunity as a result of being the winner of Season 1 of NXT. To this day we still don't know exactly what the "bigger picture" was.

The Nexus attacked The Undertaker at Bragging Rights 2010, helping Kane win a Buried Alive match. This was never explained.

Anti-Climax: The end of the Team WWE vs. Team Nexus match at SummerSlam 2010. Thanks to PPV time constraints, we get an extremely awkward finish to this particular match. Wade Barrett hits a DDT on John Cena on the exposed concrete on the floor and throws him back into the ring. He tags in Gabriel so he can finish Cena with the 450 Splash...only for Cena to move out of the way and pin Gabriel. Then Barrett comes in and immediately gets caught in the STF and taps out. All of that happened in about a two minute span, so it came off as though Cena just shrugged off a DDT on concrete to make the two most talented members of Nexus look like total tools. (Keep in mind in this company, Ricky Steamboat was legitimately knocked out by a concrete DDT from Jake Roberts, meaning fans have been conditioned even more so than normal to expect someone to be kept down by that sort of thing).

Arch-Enemy: John Cena was the most prominent, but the Nexus managed to have the entire WWE roster fall under this at one point.

The Bad Guys Win: The end of the John Cena vs. Wade Barrett match at Hell in a Cell 2010. If Cena won, The Nexus would be forced to disband; if Barrett won, Cena would be forced to join The Nexus. After interference from two new Nexus members, Barrett won, and Cena was forced to join The Nexus.

Diabolus ex Machina: So, that bunch of rookies who could barely hold their own against the likes of William Regal? Together they are able to blow through any member of the roster and go toe to toe with five star main eventers like Jericho and Edge.

Disc-One Final Boss: After John Cena defeated Wade Barrett at TLC: Tables, Ladders and Chairs 2010, CM Punk stepped in to take the role of The Nexus leader.

The Dog Bites Back: After Darren Young failed to win his post-SummerSlam match, he was brutally exiled from Nexus. Two weeks later, he shows up during Wade Barrett's match with Randy Orton and distracts him enough to cost him the win.

Evil Costume Switch: A subtle one, but it works oh-so-well - high-flying pretty boy Justin Gabriel, who'd worn white tights during his full run on NXT, started wearing black trunks when he turned heel as part of the NXT Riot.

Fire-Forged Friends: One of the distinguishing characteristics of The Nexus is their unwavering respect and loyalty to each other. In the promo following the "NXT Riot", Wade Barrett said this is because they all came to loathe WWE management during NXT, in spite of the fact that they were in competition with each other. Their grievances included Pro/Rookie pairings that were designed to fall apart or work against the Rookies, the humiliating "challenges" they were forced to endure, and last-minute rule changes that cost some of them their spot on NXT. Thus, the only people they found to be sympathetic to their individual gripes were each other. However, since that time, Daniel Bryan and Darren Young were excommunicated from the group, and in addition, the other members let Michael Tarver get decimated by Cena, and since that same episode, Otunga and Barrett were showing signs of dissension. It would seem that they may not be as fire forged as first thought, since as they lost more members, they became progressively more divided until they essentially split into two, with only one member of the original 8 in the "New Nexus".

Fiery Redhead: Heath Slater is very fiery and very redhead. Well, fiery in a goofball sense, but still.

For the Evulz: When Skip Sheffield commented on the brutal beatdown of Ricky Steamboat and other WWE Legends in the middle of a plug for Ricky's new DVD set, he said that The Nexus did it just for fun.

The end of the Team WWE vs. Team Nexus match at SummerSlam 2010. Thanks to PPV time constraints, we get an extremely awkward finish to this particular match. Wade Barrett hits a DDT on John Cena on the exposed concrete on the floor and throws him back into the ring. He tags in Gabriel so he can finish Cena with the 450 Splash...only for Cena to move out of the way and pin Gabriel. Then Barrett comes in and immediately gets caught in the STF and taps out. All of that happened in about a two minute span, so it came off as though Cena just shrugged off a DDT on concrete to make the two most talented members of Nexus look like total tools. (Keep in mind in this company, Ricky Steamboat was legitimately knocked out by a concrete DDT from Jake Roberts, meaning fans have been conditioned even more so than normal to expect someone to be kept down by that sort of thing).

In a less direct show of invincibility and Plot Armor, John Cena completely no-selling his "firing" by showing up at Raw every single week afterward. In fact, he did more damage to Nexus at this point than in the entire angle previous. CM Punk, doing Raw commentary duties as he recovered from an injury, would point out every time that Cena was fired yet somehow still be involved with Raw every week. Which actually turned out to be a tip as to who he would be targeting when he took over Nexus and why.

Later played straight, when The Undertaker returned on the February 21, 2011 episode of Raw, and didn't even so much as look at the men who helped Kane bury him alive several months earlier. It should be noted that Undertaker's return occurred after the New Nexus/Corre split, and with the exception of Otunga, The New Nexus weren't involved. However, The Corre were also at the show to defend the newly won Tag Team titles.

Kick the Dog: The brutal beatdown of Ricky Steamboat and other WWE Legends in the middle of a plug for Ricky's new DVD set was probably the Nexus's most heinous act to date.

Laser-Guided Karma: The Nexus began by ambushing people and tearing apart WWE until they got contracts. After Wade Barrett "fired" John, he goes on a crusade to destroy Nexus until he gets his hands on all of them but also to get his job back.

Morton's Fork: The Free or Fired match at Survivor Series 2010. If John Cena declares Wade Barrett the winner, he is free from his duties to The Nexus. If John Cena declares Randy Orton the winner, he would be fired from the WWE. Even Taking A Third Option was not a good plan, as that was merely calling the match down the middle and letting fate decide Cena's future instead of intentionally siding with one of the two competitors. And that is just looking at it from Cena's perspective. Looking at it through the perspective of an impartial onlooker, if John Cena declared Wade the winner, he would win the WWE title and almost assuredly force The Nexus's two biggest rivals against each other (and they never likedeach other to being with). If Cena were to declare Orton the winner, the biggest thorn in the side of Wade Barrett and The Nexus would be forced into retirement, and the morale of the locker room and the WWE Universe would be devastated in the process.

Early on, Nexus made it clear they were only using John Cena as a stepping stone toward their "bigger picture" due to his position and harbored no real ill will toward him. Then the bigger picture subject dropped and Nexus became solely about terrorizing Cena.

New Rules as the Plot Demands: The original rules of John Cena having to join Nexus was just that - he had to become a member of Nexus, the logic being that being a member of Nexus meant doing what Wade Barrett says since all of Nexus does what he says. On the Raw following Hell in a Cell, when Cena tried to pull Exact Words to attack Otunga, the anonymous Raw GM informed Cena that he also had to follow each and every command Barrett gave him, and failure to do so meant Barrett could officially fire him.

Not-So-Harmless Villain: Remember Michael Tarver, perennial loser who tapped out to drinking soda? Remember Skip Sheffield, wacky Good Ol' Boy more interested in getting his catchphrases over than listening to his WWE Pro? Remember Justin Gabriel, white-meat baby face with a cool finish and a winning smile? Yeah, those guys are gone now. Subverted by Heath Slater and Darren Young; Slater, as evidenced by his segment with Edge on the August 16, 2010 Raw, is still the complete goof he was in NXT, except now he's supposed to be booed by the fans. Young, on the other hand, was pretty much consistently the fall guy of The Nexus and was kicked out of the group for being the obvious weak link.

Oh, Crap!: Wade Barrett's expression in the December 6, 2010 episode of Raw where David Otunga told him to rehire Cena or the other members would kick him out of Nexus is priceless.

Perspective Flip: Nexus' theme song, "We Are One" by 12 Stones, was originally written as a song dedicated to the heroic sacrifices made by the troops. Nexus' use of the song essentially changed it more into a song about a militaristic force, standing together unstoppable. The flip is more evident when 12 Stones made a Darker and Edgier remix of the song for Nexus, and made especially clear when Barrett came out to this song for a match during Tribute to the Troops and was booed by the soldiers there.

Smug Snake: Wade Barrett plays the role to perfection, reveling in the GM-invested power to make John Cena do his bidding. The fans' seething hatred for Barrett is palpable.

Social Semi-Circle: One of those that applies to all three groups. More often than not, all members will be facing in the same direction while conversing with each other, Last Supper style. Sometimes they justify this by having them watch something on a monitor, but just as often they're simply standing there, talking to someone over their shoulder.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet: After multiple beatdowns, run-ins, and two lost WWE Championship shots, John Cena got sick enough of the Nexus' crap that he revealed he'd put together a group willing and able to go up against them and take them out once and for all at SummerSlam 2010.

Also Daniel Bryan. For this very reason, he wasn't in The Nexus very long.

Trailers Always Spoil: Cena's joining Nexus; practically everyone expected Cena to lose his match to Barrett due to prior advertising posters for the Bragging Rights PPV including the Nexus logo. Even worse, WWE aired one of these ads during Hell in a Cell, before the Barrett vs. Cena match took place!

True Companions: When the group first formed, this was a crucial part of the group's dynamic. For example, Skip Sheffield declared that he was not afraid of having to face Cena's team of WWE superstars at SummerSlam because it would be a team of individuals, whereas The Nexus all trust each other and would willingly sacrifice themselves for the good of the group. Since their loss at SummerSlam, this has been mostly talk, with Darren Young and Michael Tarver being brutally excommunicated out of the group and David Otunga working to make a name for himself. In fact it was the loss of this dynamic that led to CM Punk hijacking the group and effectively splitting it down the middle between his Nexus on Raw and the Corre on Smackdown.

Underwear of Power: This applied to all three groups until 2011, as none of them have worn pants up until this point. This was Lampshaded by John Cena and he is the only exception. Heath Slater became the first person to switch to long tights in May 2011.

Wade Barrett coming down to the ring during a match involving the WWE Champion? Not so odd. The seven eliminated NXT Rookies showing up and following Barrett's lead as they destroy John Cena and lay waste to Raw? Either a Shocking Swerve or a Moment of Awesome. While many fans believed that some of the NXT Rookies would eventually find their way back to WWE's big shows in time, nobody expected that it would be six days after the end of the first "season" of NXT - and nobody expected them to come in like that.

The December 27, 2010 episode of Raw - David Otunga apparently leads Nexus to the ring to apologize to Cena and offer a truce. Cena turns him down. Otunga leads Nexus halfway back up the ramp. Then, suddenly, orders the rest of his teammates to storm the ring and beat down Cena once again, each of them hitting Cena with their Finishing Move in quick succession. Then CM Punk, who was essentially the reason that Cena had come down to the ring in the first place, shows up...and hits Cena with the GTS (Go To Sleep). He gets a chair, starts to whack Cena with it, stops... and then sits down in the chair, contemplating a Nexus armband for a moment. With a smile on his face, he slips the armband onto his bicep, establishing himself as the newest member - and as the audience found out next week, the new leader - of The Nexus.

Worth It: On the September 20, 2010 episode of Raw, John Cena agreed to any stipulation Wade Barrett wanted just to finally get his hands on him in a one-on-one match. Barrett said that he'd tried to recruit Cena to The Nexus before, but this time, he'd leave him with no choice: if Cena loses to Barrett at Hell in a Cell, Cena joins Nexus. Cena fired back with a stipulation of his own - if he wins, Nexus is history - but considered the risk to his career path worth it just to finally get his hands on Barrett in a one-on-one match. This backfired painfully; Cena lost the match and was forced to join The Nexus, and per the anonymous Raw GM's orders, he had to obey Barrett's orders or he would be fired.

You Have Failed Me: When Darren Young was unable to win his post-Summerslam match on Raw, the rest of Nexus turned on him pretty quickly.

Michael Tarver received a beatdown from John Cena after losing to him on the Raw following Hell in a Cell, with no Nexus members around to help him; Barrett later told Cena he was going to kick Tarver out anyway.

After Wade Barrett's humiliating defeat at TLC 2010 (as well as the various injuries he suffered at TLC 2010), CM Punk emerged as the new Nexus leader, not only costing Barrett a shot at the WWE Championship, but ripping Barrett's own Nexus armband off in the process as one hell of an exclamation point.

Tropes associated with the New Nexus include:

Cult: Hoo boy. The New Nexus was already showing signs of this from the jump...but once Punk launched into one of his monologues on the January 17, 2011 Raw

Darker and Edgier: When CM Punk joined the Nexus, he introduced whippings, group beatdowns (on fellow Nexus members), mock suicides, cultish sermons, and serious biblical overtones to the group. Imagine what Punk would have doneto Cena if he had been the leader of the Nexus at the time Cena was forced to join the group.

Demoted to Extra: What happened with the group once Punk declared he would leave WWE with the WWE Championsip. Otunga and McGillicutty was the only one left of the group, Mason Ryan was out with an injury, and Husky Harris had been sent back to their developmental system. They lost their tag team titles to Evan Bourne and Kofi Kingston. Otunga was later repackaged with a lawyer gimmick, while McGillicutty was sent to NXT.

Don't Try This at Home: After CM Punk's brutal initiation rituals for New Nexus, every week, Jerry Lawler has been giving what amounts to an anti-hazing PSA whenever Nexus is brought up.

Revolving Door Band: A non-musical example to the point that within seven months, Otunga is the only survivor from the original lineup.

Selective Obliviousness: CM Punk's motivation for joining the Nexus and opposing John Cena stemmed from his What the Hell, Hero? logic of John Cena coming back after being fired and attacking The Nexus. People that do not work for the company attacking members of the Raw roster in attempt to get contracts and using unnecessary brute force? Are we talking about John Cena or The Nexus?

Tropes associated with The Corre include:

Arch-Enemy: Theirs seems to be The Big Show... which makes sense, since Big Show was the biggest enemy of the Original Nexus on the SmackDown side of WWE, as well as being pretty much the biggest possible enemy of anyone in WWE.

Black and Grey Morality: Corre is the grey compared to The Nexus (being the black) in the idea of being the lesser of two evils. Slater and Gabriel joined Barrett because they didn't agree with Punk's method of initiation. Plus Barrett claims that he made a mistake in making the Nexus all about him, and that in the Corre there is no leader, they are all equal. However, once again, this became a fatal flaw as the extreme individuality and lack of leadership led to the Corre splitting up.

Bullying a Dragon: The Corre seems to like doing this quite a bit. First main target on Smackdown? The Big Show. Second main target (because he didn't follow their instructions)? Kane.

Defector from Decadence: Justin Gabriel and Heath Slater. First from Nexus in order to join Barrett to form the Corre, then from the Corre when Barrett's "It's All About Me" attitude became too much for them.

Demoted to Extra: For WrestleMania XXVII. Their match against Team Big Show was a thirty second squash with Big Show winning. Since then, they really never got back any of the steam they used to have.

Finishing Move: Wade Barrett's Wasteland, Heath Slater's jumping reverse STO (jumping complete shot), Justin Gabriel's 450 Splash, and Ezekiel Jackson's Lariat and the Book of Ezekiel (a standing one-arm side slam). When facing Big Show, Slater will use an STO with Big Show on his knees, and Zeke will settle for the good old fashioned Body Slam.

Fire-Forged Friends: It seems that The Corre has now hijacked this aspect lost from the New Nexus.

Gone Horribly Right: Barrett getting kicked out of The Nexus was supposed to be a Break the Haughty moment, which it was. It also turned out to be the best thing to happen to him, because the resulting humility allowed the Corre to obtain the Tag Team and Intercontinental Titles. But then he let the success and the greed go to his head again

The Juggernaut: EZEKIEL. JACKSON. So far, nothing has been shown to even be able to slow the man down, and mows over similarly sized larger wrestlers like The Big Show like a truck over a speed bump. The only real time he was shown to be at a disadvantage was at the Royal Rumble, where it took fellow monster Kane to eliminate him - and it took Kane using his BRAINS to get him out by low-bridging Zeke after ducking a clothesline attempt.

Meaningful Name: Think about it. The group is built on the three most skilled wrestlers from the original Nexus (not counting, of course, Daniel Bryan.) While jokes then started on why they spelled "Corre" with two R's (Barrett joked in an interview that they sent Slater to the trademark office to register the name, and since Slater's not the smartest guy around...) it's short for Correlation, "A reciprocal, parallel or complementary relationship between two or more comparable objects"... which actually describes the group fairly accurately.

Multinational Team: The Corre consists of a Brit (Barrett), a South African (Gabriel), a Guyanese (Jackson) and an American (Slater). In a really bizarre coincidence, South Africa, Guyana, and America were all former British Colonies. And in another bizarre coincidence, all three representatives of said colonies broke away from the Brit Barrett.

Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: Attack The Big Show four-on-one? Okay, maybe that works. Antagonizing Kane to the point where he and Show team up? It didn't prove to be one of their better ideas, and from there things only went downhill, until their breakup happened.

Not Me This Time: The Corre were adamant that they weren't the ones to attack SmackDown GM Theodore Long, despite doing that exact thing to then Raw GM Bret Hart several months earlier - Hell, Long's assault even occured roughly the same amount of time after the Corre's formation, that the assault on Hart did following the formation of the Nexus. Turns out they weren't lying.

Not So Different: The Corre and The New Nexus aren't as different as they claim - The Corre retained the True Companions/Fire-Forged Friends aspects of the Nexus that were abandoned by the New Nexus, and both the Corre and the New Nexus shared similar modus operendi with their repeated gang attacks.

Rearrange the Song: To ridiculous levels. It seemed like their theme song, "End of Days", got rearranged every other week.

Subverted in that Heath Slater is the only member of the Corre billed from somewhere in America, but the other members of the group are all from different countries as well. Which actually ties into the whole "We are equals" motif pretty well.

True Companions: The Corre retained this element from the original Nexus, with former-Nexus leader Barrett insisting that all four men are equal. On top of that, it's why Slater and Gabriel refused to attack each other at the urging of CM Punk, and can be seen as to why they immediately reunited with Barrett on SmackDown. Of course, Slater and Gabriel eventually split from Wade and were heading towards being True Companions, but one bad loss to The Usos split them up as well.

Underwear of Power: There's finally a bit of a subversion, not that Heath Slater has switched to long tights.

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